By Federico Bertola

Drug trafficking on darknet based marketplaces has become a highly concerning topic in law enforcement activities, recently. Even though Darkmarkets represent only a tiny fraction of the global drug trade, they are changing the drug markets social networks, introducing a new paradigm of the link between vendors and buyers of drugs. The aim of this study is to critically review the darkmarkets’ ecosystem and the previous literature regarding these new marketplaces, trying to investigate how the drug trade is changing with these new technologies, and the role of organised crime (OC) in these new illegal markets. And trying to understand how and whether is it involved OC on these cyber drug markets and the chain behind them. Despite opinions of part of the academy, the results show that there are no empirical evidences of direct involvement of OC as vendors in darkmarkets. However, there are evidences of an indirect role of OC in darknet drug trafficking, as supplier of illegal drugs to the online-vendors.

AM J QUALITATIVE RES, Volume 4, Issue 2 (Special Issue), pp. 27-34, 2020.

By Clio Andris, Daniel Della Posta, Brittany N. Freelin, Xi Zhu, Bradley Hinger, Hanzhou Chen

The American Mafia is a network of criminals engaged in drug trafficking, violence and other illegal activities. Here, we analyze a historical spatial social network (SSN) of 680 Mafia members found in a 1960 investigatory dossier compiled by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Narcotics. The dossier includes connections between members who were ‘known criminal associates’ and members are geolocated to a known home address across 15 major U.S. cities.

Under an overarching narrative of identifying the network’s proclivities toward security (dispersion) or efficiency (ease of coordination), we pose four research questions related to criminal organizations, power and coordination strategies. We find that the Mafia network is distributed as a portfolio of nearby and distant ties with significant spatial clustering among the Mafia family units.

The methods used here differ from former methods that analyze the point pattern locations of individuals and the social network of individuals separately. The research techniques used here contribute to the body of non-planar network analysis methods in GIScience and can be generalized to other types of spatially-embedded social networks.

International Journal of Geographical Information Science Volume 35, 2021 - Issue 12: Spatial Social Networks in GIScience

By Anna Sergi

This article presents findings from a qualitative research project into organized crime, policing and security across five major seaports (‘Portvilles’): Genoa (Italy); Melbourne (Australia); Montreal (Canada); New York (USA); and Liverpool (UK). Through content analysis of confidential judicial files, the article will construct the offenders’ scenarios and options for importing drugs in Portville. Through also interviews with law enforcement agencies, police forces and security staff in these seaports, the article presents the policing and security struggles to disrupt importations. The main finding is that importation roles and security techniques change constantly and quickly, as in a game of Pac-Man. Security and policing in seaports lead to the dilution and fragmentation of drug importation, and only distribution tends to remain organized in Portville. In this chaotic environment, it is the rules of trade that affect the success of drug importations the most, rather than the failures of effective security and policing.

European Journal of Criminology. 19 (4), 674-691, 2022.

By Anna Sergi

Abstract In large commercial seaports policing and security efforts to counter the drug trade, especially cocaine, do not appear to be effective beyond a mere displacement effect. In the port of Piraeus, Greece, (perceived) rising quantities of cocaine have led to calls for further securitisation of the port to curb illicit trafficking. This article will present the current trends of countering and disrupting cocaine at the port of Piraeus and question how these efforts, together with the growth of the port, are affecting the overall territory of and around the port. This article will first argue that the (perceived) increase in cocaine trade towards/in the port of Piraeus has activated a ‘utopia of security’ in the policing and security responses at the port. This utopia of security leads to paradoxes when it comes to being effective against organised crime in the port. The article will conclude by discussing the possibility of a different approach, one of displacement of countering efforts rather than of cocaine flows. This different approach can also rebalance the focus of policing and security authorities on the relationship between the port and its territory. 

European Journal of Criminology 1–21 © The Author(s) 2023 

By Adam Baird , Matthew Louis Bishop , Dylan Kerrigan

The Southern Caribbean became a key hemispheric drug transhipment point in the late 1990s, to which the alarmingly high level of homicidal violence in Trinidad is often attributed. Existing research, concentrated in criminology and mainstream international relations, as well as the anti-drug policy establishment, tends to accept this correlation, framing the challenge as a typical post-Westphalian security threat. However, conventional accounts struggle to explain why murders have continued to rise even as the relative salience of narcotrafficking has actually declined. By consciously disentangling the main variables, we advance a more nuanced empirical account of how ‘the local’ is both inserted into and mediates the impact of ‘the global’. Relatively little violence can be ascribed to the drug trade directly: cocaine frequently transits through Trinidad peacefully, whereas firearms stubbornly remain within a distinctive geostrategic context we term a ‘weapons sink’. The ensuing murders are driven by the ways in which these ‘residues’ of the trade reconstitute the domestic gangscape. As guns filter inexorably into the community, they reshape the norms and practices underpinning acceptable and anticipated gang behaviour, generating specifically ‘residual’ forms of violence that are not new in genesis, but rather draw on long historical antecedents to exacerbate the homicide panorama. Our analysis emphasises the importance of taking firearms more seriously in understanding the diversity of historically constituted violences in places that appear to resemble—but differ to—the predominant Latin American cases from which the conventional wisdom about supposed ‘drug violence’ is generally distilled.

Political Geography. Volume 106, October 2023, 102966

by Julia Stanyard

The development of transport infrastructure boosts trade and stimulates economic growth. However, this infrastructure can also benefit criminal networks, which use air transport to traffic illicit goods such as drugs, wildlife and gold. Their activities are disguised from regulatory bodies, and many act in collusion with corrupt officials. However, this can be countered by implementing effective oversight measures. This is crucial considering the substantial expansion of African air traffic in recent years, forecasts that Africa will continue to be one of the fastest-growing regions in the world for aviation, and the challenges that the aviation sector globally is facing due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

ENACT Africa, 2023. 18p.

By Maximilian Meyer, Jean N. Westenberg , Kerry L. Jang , Fiona Choi , Stefanie Schreiter , Nickie Mathew , Conor King, Undine. Lang , Marc Vogel and R. Michael Krausz

Understanding drug market dynamics and their underlying driving factors is paramount to developing effective responses to the overdose crisis in North America. This paper summarises the distinct drug market trends observed locally and internationally over the past decade to extrapolate future drug market trajectories. The emergence of fentanyl on North American street markets from 2014 onwards led to a shift of street drug use patterns. Previously perceived as contaminants, novel synthetic opioids became the drugs of choice and a trend towards higher potency was observed across various substance classes. The diversification of distribution strategies as well as the regionalisation and industrialisation of production followed basic economic principles that were heavily influenced by prosecution and policy makers. Particularly, the trend towards higher potency is likely most indicative of what to expect from future illicit drug market developments. Nitazenes and fentanyl-analogues, several times more potent than fentanyl itself, are increasingly detected in toxicological testing and have the potential of becoming the drugs of choice in the future. The dynamic of drug import and local production is less clear and influenced by a multitude of factors like precursor availability, know-how, infrastructure, and the success of local drug enforcement strategies. Drug market dynamics and the current trajectory towards ultrapotent opioids need to be recognised by legislation, enforcement, and the health care system to prepare effective responses. Without significant improvements in treatment access, the implementation of preventative approaches and early warning systems, the mortality rate will continue to increase. Furthermore, there is no mechanism in place preventing the currently North American focused overdose crisis to spread to other parts of the globe, particularly Europe. A system of oversight, research, and treatment is needed to address mortality rates of historic proportions and prevent further harm.

International Journal of Mental Health Systems (2023) 17:36

By Europol and US Drug Enforcement Administration

The EU drug landscape is populated by a diverse range of criminal actors involved in the production, trafficking and distribution of a variety of illicit substances. These actors benefit from a number of criminal enablers and facilitators in their operations. In recent years, seizures of methamphetamine and cocaine linked to Mexican criminal actors have emerged as a prominent feature of the EU drug landscape. Mexican criminal actors and EU-based criminal networks have been working together to traffic both of these illicit drug types from Latin America to the EU.

This report delves into the activities of these criminals and their methods. Drug trafficking operations benefit from a number of different actors, such as brokers, cooks, envoys, intermediaries and money laundering service providers. Examples of the methods used by the criminals include the corruption of officials in the public and private sectors and the exploitation of legal business structures. The report also provides an outlook on potential threats that may develop in the future.

In the first initiative of this kind, Europol and the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) have issued this joint strategic product with the aim of expanding the intelligence picture on the involvement of Mexican criminal actors in the EU drug market.

The Hague: Europol and the DEA, 2022. 8p.

By European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction and Europol

EU Drug Market: Amphetamine describes the European amphetamine market from production and trafficking, to distribution and use. It details the processes, materials and actors involved at different stages and levels of the market. Taking a threat assessment approach, the module identifies key issues and makes recommendations for action at EU and Member State level.

Amphetamine is the most common synthetic stimulant drug available on the European drug market and it competes with cocaine and a range of new psychoactive substances for a share of the profitable European Union (EU) stimulant drug market. The prevalence of amphetamine use is higher than methamphetamine in most EU Member States, with notable exceptions, such as Czechia and Slovakia. Illicit amphetamine products mostly consist of powders or pastes, usually mixed with other ingredients, such as lactose, dextrose or caffeine, but tablets containing amphetamine are also available. The estimated annual value of the retail market for amphetamine in the EU is at least EUR 1.1 billion, with a range of EUR 0.9 billion to EUR 1.4 billion.

The demand for amphetamine in the EU is met by European production concentrated largely in the Netherlands and Belgium, where production is complex, large-scale and based on the drug precursor BMK. BMK has some limited use in industry and can be diverted from legitimate sources or smuggled into the EU, but more frequently it is made from chemicals known as designer precursors imported from China. Some of the amphetamine produced in the EU is used to produce captagon tablets, which are mainly trafficked to consumer markets in the Middle East

Lisbon, Portugal: European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction and Europol, 2023. 8p.

By Gabriel Feltran, Isabela Vianna Pinho and Lucia Bird Ruiz-Benitez de Lugo

Cocaine trafficking through West Africa, following the well-established route from Latin America to the European consumer market, appears to be in a phase of sharp growth. Since 2016, the majority of consignments transiting West Africa begin their journey in Brazil. The Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) – the largest criminal organization in Brazil – is pivotal to understanding Brazil’s newfound importance for cocaine in West Africa.

Cocaine trafficking between Brazil and West Africa stretches back at least to the 1980s, but as cultivation in Latin America continues to increase and consumption in Europe has grown, more and more cocaine is being moved along this path. In 2018, only one West African country – Senegal – was in the top 10 destinations for cocaine seized in Brazilian ports; by 2019, after a bumper year of seizures in Brazil, Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone had also pushed their way onto the list. Cultivation in Latin America reached record levels in 2021, and in the following year an unprece-dented 24 tonnes were seized across West Africa.

In this report, we focus on the flow of cocaine between Brazil and West Africa, which largely supplies the lucrative European consumer market, and in particular on the role of the PCC, which straddles various illicit supply chains.

The research for this report has drawn on various data collection techniques but rests primarily on field observations of the retail trade and transit of illegal goods in South America, West Africa and Europe between 2015 and 2022. These observations, described in detail in the authors’ field notebooks, were supplemented by formal and informal interviews with those involved in the cocaine trade, from the South American borders to the retail trade spaces of Europe, allowing us to trace the journey of cocaine through the different nodes of the value chain.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2023 28p.

By Gina Bou Serhal, Kristian Alexander and Rahaf Alkhazraji

This issue brief delves into the changing landscape of Italian organized crime, focusing on the ‘Ndrangheta, a potent criminal group originating from Calabria. It explores how the ‘Ndrangheta has diversified its criminal activities, including drug trafficking and environmental crimes, and its alleged connections with international criminal and terrorist organizations. The brief also sheds light on the emergence of the youthful “Baby Mafia,” or Camorra in Naples, known for its decentralized structure and social media presence glamorizing criminal life. It emphasizes Italy’s efforts to combat organized crime and the necessity for a united European approach to address the mafia’s global influence and adaptability across borders.

Stockholm: Institute for Security and Development Policy, 2023. 6p.

By Jennifer J. Carroll

Against the backdrop of a post-Soviet state set aflame by geopolitical conflict and violent revolution, Narkomania considers whether substance use disorders are everywhere the same and whether our responses to drug use presuppose what kind of people those who use drugs really are. Jennifer J. Carroll's ethnography is a story about public health and international efforts to quell the spread of HIV. Carroll focuses on Ukraine where the prevalence of HIV among people who use drugs is higher than in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and unpacks the arguments and myths surrounding medication-assisted treatment (MAT) in Ukraine. What she presents in Narkomania forces us to question drug policy, its uses, and its effects on "normal" citizens. Carroll uses her findings to explore what people who use drugs can teach us about the contemporary societies emerging in post-Soviet space. With examples of how MAT has been politicized, how drug use has been tied to ideas of "good" citizenship, and how vigilantism towards people who use drugs has occurred, Narkomania details the cultural and historical backstory of the situation in Ukraine. Carroll reveals how global efforts supporting MAT in Ukraine allow the ideas surrounding MAT, drug use, and HIV to resonate more broadly into international politics and echo into the heart of the Ukrainian public.

Ithaca, NY; London: Cornell University Press Ithaca and London, 2019. 251p.

By The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA)

This report is based on information provided to the EMCDDA by the EU Member States, the candidate country Türkiye, and Norway, in an annual reporting process.

The purpose of the current report is to provide an overview and summary of the European drug situation up to the end of 2022. All grouping, aggregates and labels therefore reflect the situation based on the available data in 2022 in respect to the composition of the European Union and the countries participating in EMCDDA reporting exercises. However, not all data will cover the full period. Due to the time needed to compile and submit data, many of the annual national data sets included here are from the reference year January to December 2021. Analysis of trends is based only on those countries providing sufficient data to describe changes over the period specified. The reader should also be aware that monitoring patterns and trends in a hidden and stigmatised behaviour like drug use is both practically and methodologically challenging. For this reason, multiple sources of data are used for the purposes of analysis in this report. Although considerable improvements can be noted, both nationally and in respect to what is possible to achieve in a European level analysis, the methodological difficulties in this area must be acknowledged. Caution is therefore required in interpretation, in particular when countries are compared on any single measure. Caveats relating to the data are to be found in the online Statistical Bulletin, which contains detailed information on methodology, qualifications on analysis and comments on the limitations in the information set available. Information is also available there on the methods and data used for European level estimates, where interpolation may be used.

Lisbon: EMCDDA, 2023.

By The United Nations General Assembly. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

The present report outlines human rights challenges in addressing and countering key aspects of the world drug problem. It also offers an overview of recent positive developments to shift towards more human rights-centred drug policies, and provides recommendations on the way forward in view of the upcoming midterm review of the 2019 Ministerial Declaration and to contribute to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

United Nations, 2023. 19p.

By Shehryar Fazli

The Taliban’s 3 April 2022 edict prohibiting poppy cultivation and the use and trade of all types of narcotics across Afghanistan could have grave implications for a collapsing economy. Poppy is the country’s most valuable cash crop, and its labour-intensive cultivation employs several hundred thousand people, pushing up wages and living standards of those directly and indirectly involved. Requiring little water, the poppy’s resilience in adverse agricultural conditions makes it an attractive long-term investment, especially during one of the worst droughts in decades. The new ban would affect farmers in the rural southwest region, where many Taliban leaders are from, as well as influential players across the opium and heroin supply chain. In the absence of significant financial incentives to these constituencies, the risks of a major backlash probably outweigh any benefits of enforcing a poppy ban. Providing such financial incentives would be dependent on significant foreign assistance. Some prominent experts and commentators infer that international legitimacy and funding was the Taliban’s primary motivation in announcing the edict. If so, there are no signs yet that the move will generate the desired response. Afghanistan has been politically and economically isolated since the Taliban’s August 2021 forceful seizure of power. The freezing of around $9 billion in central bank foreign reserves, held mostly in the US, triggered a collapse of the local currency and major liquidity crisis, while aid cut-offs and sanctions triggered hyper-inflation and impeded trade and other business. There are indications that the international community, led by the US, is softening its position to prevent an economic collapse affecting millions of Afghans who face starvation. Without tangible Taliban commitments to basic rights and equality, however, especially of girls and women, deeper international engagement, including on counter-narcotics, is unlikely. How willing and able the Taliban will be to enforce its edict may remain unclear for several months. The ban came amid the poppy harvest in the southwestern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, bastions of both poppy cultivation and Taliban support. Significant quantities, therefore, may have already been harvested. Transporting them up the supply chain, and to western destinations, will depend on resourceful transnational crime groups. The most important of these are arguably in Pakistan, which shares Afghanistan’s longest border and most of the routes for westward movement of illicit goods, people, and cash from Afghanistan. Criminal networks here traverse the Indian and Iranian borders, and also move their product by sea off the southern Makran coast and Karachi port, to European, African, Asian and Australian markets. These networks, and the geography in which they operate, also require close examination. By better understanding the context and trends, policy-makers will be better able to assess policy options and their implications, especially in Europe, the destination of significant volumes of heroin from Afghanistan

SOC ACE Research Paper No. 9.

Birmingham, UK: University of Birmingham. 2022. 35p.

By Ruggero Scaturro

Recent studies conducted by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) show that the war in Ukraine may displace existing drug trafficking routes from and through Ukraine and exacerbate the instability that enables drug trafficking and manufacturing, including in areas not directly connected or exposed to hostilities.

Trauma derived from the conflict might also have an impact on current and future drug use patterns in communities affected by the war, which could create new opportunities for both local and foreign drug traffickers to meet this growing demand. This becomes particularly relevant when analyzing flows of traditional opioids as well as new psychoactive substances (NPS), and stimulants used by both civilians and soldiers at the front line. Neighbouring Ukraine, the South Eastern Europe region represents a relatively small market for drug consumption and accounts for only a small amount of drug production and supply (primarily cannabis) to EU markets. However, its strategic location between East and West – and its proximity to the Ukraine conflict – might mean that it is particularly exposed to the effects of the war on traffickers’ modus operandi and trafficking routes through the region.

Since February 2022, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused the progressive displacement and movement of traditional drug production and trafficking hubs in southern and eastern Ukraine towards the west, around the borders with Poland, Slovakia and Romania. Similarly, in the context of criminal mobility, overwhelmed border security management between Ukraine and its neighbouring countries to the west leads to opportunities for both Ukrainian and Russian criminals to operate and manage their businesses from South Eastern Europe, thanks to the possibility to forge documents and receive ‘golden’ passports due to their investments in countries in the region.

This report assesses whether the war in Ukraine and its resulting disruption are having a significant impact on drug flows through South Eastern Europe. The research is based on the assumption that, because of an intensified military presence in Eastern Europe, traditional flows of drugs have been, at least temporarily, disrupted. This includes the northern route of opioids from Afghanistan, which supplies large markets across Central Asia, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Furthermore, other drug routes, such as for cocaine from Latin America to the port of Odesa, have atrophied. Conversely, flows along alternative routes, such as the Balkan route, appear to have intensified.

In view of these shifts, this report offers an assessment of emerging trends in drugs flows and provides an overview of data on seizures in South Eastern Europe. It also assesses the impact that the Ukraine war is having on wholesale and retail drug prices and, where assessment is possible, on levels of purity and the perceived quality of substances.

Center for the Study of Democracy; Global Initiative Against Organized Crime, 2023. 28p.

By Center for Strategic and International Studies; By Christopher Hernandez-Roy, Rubi Bledsoe & Andrea Michelle Cerén

In 2020, Western and Central Europe comprised 21 percent of the global demand of cocaine. The drug is now the second most consumed illicit drug on the entire continent behind cannabis. Europe has become an attractive destination for drug traffickers seeking higher profits and lower risks. This is due to higher market prices and lesser legal penalties for possession and consumption than in the United States. While a kilogram of cocaine is priced at around $28,000 in the United States, the same kilogram is priced at around $40,000 in places like France and Spain—and a staggering $219,454 in Estonia. Furthermore, European interdiction efforts in Europe and the Caribbean territories do not match U.S. disruption efforts in the Western Hemisphere. Available data suggests the European Union spends only $3-4 billion on supply-side reduction in comparison to $17.4 billion for the United States. According to European officials, this allows border security forces to interdict only around 10–12 percent of the total flow of cocaine into the continent. Without a multipronged approach to curb Europe’s cocaine demand through higher legal penalities and transatlantic interdiction efforts, the cocaine market there will continue to boom—and with it, drug violence and health threats.

Washington, DC: CSIS, 2023.

By Peter Tinti

Despite 8 years of violent insurgency in northern Mali, the region continues to be a transit zone for regional and global drug-trafficking networks. The networks have endured by ingratiating themselves with a rotating cast of actors whose tactics are based on pragmatic local conditions rather than ideology. For example, an implicit nonaggression pact among key elements of the CMA, Plateforme, and jihadist groups enables traffickers to continue unmolested. International partners should help regional governments better understand and dismantle these networks.

ENACT-- Africa, 2020. 24p.

by Christopher Hernandez-Roy and Rubi Bledsoe

Drug trafficking, especially cocaine trafficking, from source countries in South America to Europe has produced alarming and lasting effects on both sides of the Atlantic. While various trafficking routes to Europe exist, transshipment through the Caribbean, including through the European territories in the region, is of growing concern. In Europe, the expanding cocaine market has brought a rise in homicides, kidnappings, and intimidation. In the city of Antwerp, for example, there were around 200 drug-related violent incidents in the past five years as competing gangs fought over control of territory. In the Caribbean, drug trafficking by organized crime has been associated with record homicide levels, corruption, democratic backsliding, and money laundering, among other pernicious effects. It has also prompted wars between gangs over the control of criminal economies, expanded illegal firearms trafficking, and exacerbated human trafficking both within the region and beyond. Shedding light on the complexity of the issue—while providing policy recommendations for increased cooperation between the United States, Europe, and Caribbean countries—is necessary as both continents seek regional and extra-regional security.

Washington DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS),, 2023. 11p

By Venezuela Investigative Unit

In 2013, Nicolás Maduro became president of Venezuela following the death of his charismatic predecessor Hugo Chávez. Since then, the country’s cocaine trade has undergone revolutionary changes. Today, Venezuela is at risk of becoming the world’s fourth cocaine-producing country. And the Maduro regime has positioned itself as the gatekeeper to the country’s drug trade, controlling access to cocaine’s riches not only for drug traffickers but also for corrupt politicians and the military-embedded trafficking network known as the “Cartel of the Suns.” The product of more than three years of investigations, hundreds of interviews and field work in all of Venezuela’s key drug trafficking territories, this InSight Crime investigation looks at one of the world’s most important cocaine trafficking hubs – and the authoritarian regime that keeps the drugs flowing.

Washington, DC: Insight Crime, 2022. 53p.